Day 2

Miles Traveled: 615
Where we landed: North of Denver a few miles from Boulder, CO.

What a long couple of days it has been in the car. But, with each passing mile, we get closer to the reality of untethering the pop up from the pilot and relishing 10 days in the Colorado Rockies. How truly blessed are we?

I have had a few moments of sappy emotion already. The first happened when we got to Oklahoma City yesterday. It was late on a Friday afternoon in downtown OKC when we arrived so it was pretty deserted. We drove directly to the Memorial, pulled the trailer into a second spot behind us on the street, paid the meter and walked up to the site.

I felt compelled to see this memorial.  When I mentioned it a few weeks ago to the kids, they had no idea what I was talking about. I think that we talk about 9/11 so much that it is a part of their life. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building happend in 1995.  They weren't born yet. http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/ Mike was still in optometry school, I was 25 and managing Three Oaks Grill. This type of homegrown terrorism was shocking to me.

The memorial is beautifully executed. The reflecting pool seems like a mirage and is very quiet and still. There is tree that is called the "Survivor Tree" because it was the only thing left standing after the Ryder truck blew everything/one aroung it to bits. The illuminated chairs that represent each victim are so moving and appropriate. Tears, tears, tears just to be in this place.

Today more tears as the reality of being on this journey sunk in this morning. I simply looked over at Mike as we were putting the bikes on the trailer and smiled. I had a deja vu of the summer after we got married. 1992.

We were living not far from Assateaugue Island National Seashore where Mike was rangering for the summer. http://www.nps.gov/asis/index.htm. We were SOOO broke that summer that a man that Mike was waiting on in the Lobby Bar of The Peabody Hotel a few weeks before we left for Assateauge, took pity on us. Mike wound up talking to him about where he was going to be rangering for the summer and it turns out he was from the area around Ocean City, Maryland. His mother had passed away and he offered us her old, dilapidated farm house for the summer rent free in exchange for us mowing the 1 acre lot with a bushhog. That's a whole other story but this morning I was remembering us putting our bikes on Mike's old Toyota Corolla that summer outside the free farmhouse we stayed in. I couldn't help but think back to how I wouldn't have been able to imagine a trip like this back then. Tears, tears.

All tears of joy, I might add.